The Amazon Price Check app enables consumers to use their smartphones to scan the bar code on a product in a store and automatically see Amazon.com’s product information and price on that item. The app essentially turns a store into a showroom for Amazon, No. 1 in the Internet Retailer Mobile Commerce Top 300. That’s one of the smartest plays in mobile commerce today.

What really irked some store retailers was a promotion Amazon.com ran this month. Scan a product and receive $5 off the Amazon price. And a consumer could do that three times. Nice.

But now the creators of an app that has been in business since July are fighting mobile with mobile. Taap.it Live Local, free in the Apple Inc. and Android app stores, has this year signed up more than 5,000 small, local merchants in New York City, it says. The merchants offer their goods via the app; consumers can buy through the app and have products shipped to them or pick up products at the stores.

Effective yesterday, Taap.it is offering $10 off select items, double Amazon’s offer. This is what I was talking about in my Dec. 8 blog post about the Retail Industry Leaders Association’s laughable pronouncement. Store retailers have to use mobile technology to counter other retailer’s mobile moves. Taap.it is the perfect example of this.

And there’s much more retailers can do. Place 2-D bar codes on signs in stores that when scanned lead to mobile web-based content that showcases special in-store offers. Launch a mobile app that includes tools like an outfit builder that encourages customers to piece together multiple items in a set that can’t be beat by a web-only retailer trying to muscle into the store with its mobile app. Do like Orbitz has done and launch mobile-only deals, offers that not only beat those from other retailers found on price comparison scanning apps but also the offers found in your own store.

Stop crying and fight back. Mobile is here to stay and it will only be getting more powerful. Kudos to Taap.it, a real fighter.